Behold a patriarch of years, who leaneth on the staff of religion; His heart is fresh, quick to feel, a bursting fount of generosity: He, playful in his wisdom, is gladdened in his children's gladness, He, pure in his experience, loveth in his son's first love: Lofty aspirations, deep affections, holy hopes are his delight; His abhorrence is to strip from Life its charitable garment of Idea. The cold and callous sneerer, who heedeth of the merely practical, And mocketh at good uses in imaginary things, that man is his scorn: The hard unsympathizing modern, filled with facts and figures, Cautious, and coarse, and materialized in mind, that man is his pity. Passionate thirst for gain never hath burnt within his bosom, The leaden chains of that dull lust have not bound him prisoner: The shrewd world laughed at him for honesty, the vain world mouthed at him for honour, The false world hated him for truth, the cold world despised him for affection: Still, he kept his treasure, the warm and noble heart, And in that happy wise old man survive the child and lover. For human Life is as Chian wine, flavoured unto him who drinketh it, Delicate fragrance comforting the soul, as needful substance for the body: Therefore, see thou art pure and guileless; so shall thy Realities of Life Be sweetened, and tempered, and gladdened by the wholesome spirit of Romance. Dost thou live, man, dost thou live,--or only breathe and labour? Art thou free, or enslaved to a routine, the daily machinery of habit? For, one man is quickened into life, where thousands exist as in a torpor, Feeding, toiling, sleeping, an insensate weary round: The plough, or the ledger, or the trade, with animal cares and indolence, Make the mass of vital years a heavy lump unleavened. Drowsily lie down in thy dulness, fettered with the irons of circumstance, Thou wilt not wake to think and feel a minute in a month. The epitome of common life is seen in the common epitaph, Born on such a day, and dead on such another, with an interval of threescore years. For time hath been wasted on the senses, to the hourly diminishing of spirit: Lean is the soul and pineth, in the midst of abundance for the body: He forgat the worlds to which he tended, and a creature's true nobility, Nor wished that hope and wholesome fear should stir him from his hardened satisfaction. And this is death in life; to be sunk beneath the waters of the Actual, Without one feebly-struggling sense of an airier spiritual realm: Affection, fancy, feeling--dead; imagination, conscience, faith, All wilfully expunged, till they leave the man mere carcase. See thou livest, whiles thou art: for heart must live, and soul, But care and sloth and sin and self, combine to kill that life. A man will grow to an automaton, an appendage to the counter or the desk, If mind and spirit be not roused, to raise the plodding groveller: